


Extermination

by SaintDeanThomas



Series: The Road To Legacy [4]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Buddy Cop Drama, Dead animals, Gen, Ghost Hunting, Mild Gore, Mild Horror, Possession, Post-Canon, Team Bonding, Violence, abandoned factory and haunted hijinks, ectoplasmic vomiting, gashadokuro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-12
Updated: 2017-07-12
Packaged: 2018-12-01 07:43:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11481786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaintDeanThomas/pseuds/SaintDeanThomas
Summary: Jazz and Tucker have never really had any interaction aside from a few  passing conversations, but after a night on patrol takes a turn, they're going to have to work together if they want any chance of surviving the night.





	Extermination

Tucker wouldn't have chosen Jazz as his first round draft pick for a ghost hunting partner, It's not that she wasn't good at it, far from it in fact, she was smart on and off the field and -according to Danny at least- took after their mom in terms of fighting prowess, but something about her had always put him off. Thinking back, he realized that it was one of two things keeping them from being classified as "friends" really; her endless attempts to get into his head recently and the fact that she seemed to have a pathological need for control and order. Sure, the latter had been curved a little due to an encounter with Youngblood a few months ago, but she still seemed too... big sister for his tastes in preferred company. Unfortunately for him, he didn't seem to have much of a choice tonight.

\---

"Trust me, Tuck," Danny said, confident in spite of a deep roar ripping through the background, "just go with Jazz on tonight while we deal with this overgrown reptile-"

"Amphibian" Sam corrected him.

"-whatever. Besides, unless you wanna try to reach Valerie again or handle this solo, it looks like you're stuck with her for company."

Slightly indignant, Jazz folded her arms over her chest. "Stuck with?"

"Dude, don't have me on speaker phone!"

\---

With the issue of teams settled, Jazz and Tucker began making their way downtown, the two of them sitting in silence as she drove. "You know," she said, her upbeat tone finally breaking the awkward silence, "this'll be good for us! I mean, you've been friends with Danny for years but i feel like the two of us have never really talked, sure you're like a second brother to me anyway but i just don't think we ever connected without him. Well that ends tonight, yes sir, mark my words, Tucker before the end of tonight we'll be two peas in a pod!"

He couldn't deny that she had a point. Ever since they were four, Danny and Tucker had been almost inseparable, and as they got older and more kids became wary of "the Fenton menace," Tucker had become the only non-blood relative to willingly return to Fentonworks unafraid on a daily basis. Maddie and Jack were happy so long as he and Danny were having fun and even when they had their minor spats, they usually resolved it within a few minutes and went right back their games. Of course, this much interaction meant that Tucker had years and years of run ins with Jazz as well, which mostly consisted of her shouting and threatening to tell her parents whenever he and Danny did something stupid, which -considering they were constantly enabling each other- was often.

Their most memorable interaction had come after the first night Tucker had asked to spend to sleepover, much to the entire Fenton family's surprise. Despite Maddie's insistence that she leave the boys alone for the night, Jazz found herself constantly hovering around the two of them as they marathoned cartoons and played with Legos. When she couldn't contain her curiosity anymore she had approached Tucker and asked him the question that'd been burning a hole in her mind; "How come you're not scared like everybody else?" Much to her frustration, his response had been a simple shrug -the go to response of any six year old without a real answer- and for years she had been forced to accept that. But tonight she would get more than that.

Tonight, we're a team, Jazz thought, excitedly gripping the Fenton peeler as they stepped into the abandoned factory, and reluctant as it may be, that means communication and cooperation.

"So," she began, illuminating the dusty machinery with her flashlight, "what exactly are we doing here, partner?"

"R&D," Tucker responded, his face glued to his phone screen, "I've been working with my app some more and as far as we can tell this is still a 'green zone,' but there's been some... questionable activity here lately so we're just here to make sure things don't get worse."

His answer came out as little more than a whisper, almost like he was being cautious not to upset whatever was running around and making this place a 'zone' at all. He had designed the app -ironically dubbed Revelation by Danny after Tucker explained the basic functions- to ping their phones when any ghostly activity was registered in the area, then it was just a matter of algorithmically assigning it a color based on any news the site had generated. Green zones, like the one they were in now, were the most common, usually abandoned buildings with few ghost sitings dating back years and passive spirits being recorded from time to time with no serious negative press about the place. Next, there were Yellow zones, which were areas of mild to moderate activity with more aggressive haunting signs like whispering voices, cold spots, technological disruptions and the slight physical contact. Finally, there were Red Zones, active areas of high spectral activity that threatened the living and presented an ongoing danger... to no one's surprise, Tucker had already coded Amity Park to be a permanent Red Zone on the map.

"Does the app say what we should be looking out for in here?"

"Nope," he said, now using his phone as a flashlight to cover more of the factory, " but probably the same old thing as usual, the Box Ghost adding to his collection, Skulker looking for parts to add to his arsenal... some old dude in a rubber halloween mask who stashed some cash here in the sixties trying to make sure no one finds it by scaring kids off."

Jazz was surprised he could make jokes so easily given the meat packing plants dour atmosphere, but before she could properly chide him for not taking this seriously, something moved on the catwalk above them. Turning her flashlight upwards, she caught the barest trace of movement before the culprit escaped out of focus. "I think we can rule out the box ghost," she said, "otherwise we would still be hearing "beware!" right about now."

"Cool, maybe this time it actually will just be some old guy in a mask and we can call it a night."

Turning to look at him, Jazz lowered her weapon and rolled her eyes. "You don't actually believe that do you?" Just like all those years ago, Tucker simply shrugged a vague gesture of who knows.

Moving in silence deeper into the factory, the two of them were about ready to call it a night when Jazz stumbled across a dirty collection of blankets and clothes pilled into a stock room. Smiling at her discovery, she proudly walked out to where Tucker was still standing at the base of the stairs they had descended. 

"Chalk this one up as a bust, Tuck," she proclaimed, holding a tattered shirt as evidence, "looks like rational science is the real monster here"

"What is that?" he asked, incredulously.

"It's a shirt," she began, holding it out like it was a battle flag, " just a regular old run of the mill t-shirt, and last I checked ghosts didn't need to wear clothes or keep warm with a bunch of blankets, which tells me that we're dealing with-"

Cutting her off, Tucker grabbed her shoulders and turned her around to reveal the true source of his confusion. Standing behind them fifty feet away was a young boy in tattered clothes and running barefoot through the grime of the factory. Under normal circumstances, they would have assumed he was running away from something chasing him, but as they followed him with their eyes, they noticed a smaller streak tearing through the shadows, signaling that he was the hunter not the prey. Watching as he reached a corner, Jazz couldn't help but call out to him. "Um, excuse me," she began, swinging the light onto him to get a better view, "do you need help?"

Freezing in his pursuit, the boy looked at the two of them, his face dirty and covered in thin scratches like he'd been attacked by an animal recently. With a new sense of fear apparently washing over him, the stranger turned and ran from the light into the shadows of the factory.

Taking his queue, Jazz let her momentary surprise rob her of momentum before giving chase shortly after. "Hey! Wait!' she yelled as he footsteps echoed through the basement, "It's dangerous in here!"

Granted this was probably an understatement, but in her defense she had learned that unless the offender is floating and trying to assault the living, most hauntings in major cities could be explained away with common sense. Sometimes it was a trapped animal fighting for freedom, but more often than not mysterious sightings were the results of people catching quick glimpses of squatters in the night. Plus, unless she was mistaken, people ran from ghosts not the other way around, which meant that the kid was more than likely just homeless and thought his cover had been blown.

Withing minutes, Jazz and Tucker- who had run after her, cursing all the way- found themselves lost in the darkness of the factory again. "Great," he said, huffing and wheezing as he looked around, "app works, dude vanished, let's go home."

"Tucker, we can't just leave that kid, what if he gets hurt in here?"

"What if we get hurt in here?"

"If he wanted to hurt us," she snapped, firm in her conviction, "don't you think he would have by now?"

Tucker was about to argue further when the smell of week old meant and the wet sound of chewing interrupted his train of thought. Swinging his phone around the room in search of a source, he found only Jazz there in the darkness with a nervous look on her face. "That wasn't me," she whispered, the fight suddenly gone from her voice, "and i don't think we're alone in here."

Frantic now, the two of them took battle positions back to back, with Tucker holding the Fenton Thermos and Jazz fully dressed in the armor of the Fenton Peeler. For a while the room was silent except the echoes of mastication that neither of them could find a source for, with no sign of the boy from earlier or any other living thing until something dropped into the middle of the room with a moist splat. Wheeling on the sound, the two of them found themselves face to face and standing over the twitching, decapitated body of a rather large rat. Focusing all of their lights up, they saw the runaway sitting on the catwalk and watching them, unblinking.

"A rat," Jazz said, breathlessly, "he's been eating rats in here."

Torn between pity and disgust for the kid, she flinched as he jumped down from his perch and landed in a corner. "Jazz," Tucker began, never taking his eyes off their visitor, "look on the ground."

Too stunned to do anything but comply, she once again swept the room with her flashlight, this time focusing on the ground and immediately regretting that decision. All around them, in various states of decay were dozens if not hundreds of rat carcasses, each one somehow more mutilated than the last. "Oh god..." 

"Still sure he's not gonna hurt us?"

As she lingered on the rotting leftovers spread out before them, she was caught off guard by a small voice repeating the word "Hungry" over and over until it became it's own echo. However, before either of them could react further, the rat-eater fell to his hands and knees, a green froth bubbling out from his mouth as he began to draw the multitude of festering corpses near him into his huddle.

"Tucker-" Jazz began, unable to move yet again.

"It'snotworkingit'snotworking!"

"-thermos... please"

"Jesusfuckingchristwhyisn'titworking?!" he yelled, waving the inert thermos at the grotesque scene in front of them.

As if the universe was punishing them, things got much worse as the inhuman froth evolved into a thick stream of black vomit flecked with green chunks that coated the boy's tattered rags and, more horrifically, began to seep into his horde of former meals. Some of the older corpses appeared to use the bile to fill the holes left by their gradual putrefaction while the newer additions appeared to be content with just having it mat in their fur just enough to coat the breaks in skin that had occurred. Regardless, by the time the boy seemed to run out of his concoction the damage had been done and no less than fifty rats had been converted into a barely recognizable slurry that he then proceeded to inhale.

Entranced by the disgusting scene, neither Jazz nor Tucker had moved from their location, so when the boy stood up from his abrupt ritual, they were still facing him. As he opened his mouth again, Tucker was sure the stranger was going for a repeat performance, but instead he only heard the tearing of skin as his face stared to split from where his blood stained lips connected to his cheeks and a thicker, lime green slime began to travel up his face before being interrupted by the high pitched whine of the Fenton peeler going off and stripping the most of substance away.

"RUN!" Jazz screamed, heading for the door which Tucker had momentarily forgot existed.

Following her lead, soon the two of them were backtracking through the plant faster than either had thought possible and were exstatic when they saw that they had reached the stairs leading up from the basement agsain. "Thank heavens," she cried, the battlized peeler armor still clanking along, "we're almost there!"

But as they approached the bottom step, a large figure lodged itself between them and their escape route.

"Oh come on!"

The boy was no longer wildly spitting out ectoplasm but instead was wearing the finalized version of his efforts. Draping his body like nightmarish armor was a giant glowing green rat skeleton, with it's hollowed out bones clinging to his frame in a morose show of support. Snapping its phantom jaws open and shut as it sniffed the stale air of the factor, the 'rat king' turned on Jazz and Tucker and whipped it's skeletal tail at the frustration of their intrusion on his domain. 

"I hate this city," Tucker said, careful to avoid sudden movements in front of the new threat, "'yeah man ghosts are cool but you know what would really be cool, possessed kids wearing ghost skeletons, that's where its at.'"

"Tucker, shh."

Watching as the host body moved effortlessly within the rat overlay, Jazz found herself more curious than afraid as she began a mental playback of the situations. Obviously the kid was possessed, that much she was sure of at least considering the Fenton Peeler only had an effect on him after he began forming his outer body. That would also explain why the thermos hadn't worked earlier, if he wasn't a ghost then there was only so much their equipment could do until the possessor made itself known. 

But now that it's out in the open...

Bracing herself, she thrust out her hands and fired as the rat king lunged at the first sign of movement. Missing her first shot and grazing the phantom's ribcage at first, Jazz found herself flung back as the spirit whipped its tail in defense. Crumbling against the machine she had just dented, she said a silent thanks to the body armor her parents had made for softening a backbreaking blow into a merely painful one. Trying again with the scope, she found her mark the second time as the creature stumbled back into the staircase from which it had leapt and she got a clear shot at its skull, fully separating the host from his captor. Taking a moment to collect herself again, she sighed as she turned around to tell Tucker that their job was finished, only to be surprised when she saw him rush past her and tackle the host, who had only been momentarily stunned by the removal of his bony body armor and was seconds away from grabbing her as his mouth began frothing again. 

Jamming the thermos into the offender's mouth through the translucent foam as he pinned him down, Tucker was relieved when the familiar whir of activity signaled the impending removal of the sprit. Swinging and clawing at him at first, the boy eventually stopped squirming as the last dredges of ectoplasm were sucked into the containment unit and he thankfully passed out.

With both of them now heaving and huffing at the energy they'd expended, Jazz and Tucker took a moment to catch their breath before scooping up the unconscious youth -who'd been puppeteered into trying to eat them not even ten minutes ago- and carting him out with them to the car. "So," Tucker began, staring at the now hopefully empty factory after they had loaded their human cargo in the back seat, "how'd that 'rational scientific answer' of yours play out?"

"I'd say about as well as your app and its so called 'Green Zone'" she responded, her voice still kind despite their ordeal.

Once again offering her nothing but a shrug and a small smile , Tucker climbed into the passenger seat and relaxed for the ride home. "Nobody's perfect."

Putting the car in drive and adding as much distance as much distance as possible between them and their makeshift arena, something finally clicked in Jazz's mind. "You know, rats are opportunistic cannibals, they eat each other all the time in moments of starvation..."  
Raising his eyebrow in interest, Tuck found himself drawn into the conversation. "Your point being?"

"My point is," she continued, "ghosts are pure emotion, and they supposedly find it easier to possess like-minded people, a similar motive makes control easier. If this kid got so hungry he was considering eating rats in a place where a bunch of rats died while starving-"

"Then he must have been an easy target" he finished. "Bigger body, easier to eat more, but he also stays hungrier longer." Thinking back to the echoed cries of 'hungry' in the back room, Tucker found himself increasingly uncomfortable at the thought of any human being a slave to that kind of hunger.

"Which means that if we didn't pull that thing out of him when we did," Jazz continued, determined to reach the logical conclusion of the situation despite the look on Tucker's face, "who knows what would've happened to someone else in there. We made a good team tonight, Tuck, we should do this more often."

"Which part, the part where we got chased by the son of Willard and came really close to being munched like a Nasty Burger, that part? ...Oh, speaking of which, I would kill for a double with cheese and some fries right now."

Turning green at the thought of food after the parade of corpses and vomit they'd been exposed to not too long ago, Jazz tried to shake the memory of partially chewed vermin and the stink of decomposition. "How could you possibly think of eating... anything after tonight?" she said, visibly trying hide her disgust, "I think I'm seriously considering joining Sam's 'nothing with a face' diet... forever." 

"Look man, if i gave up burgers every time I saw something horrifying or something tried to kill me, I'd starve in this city."

"That's... a strangely rational way to look at things."

"It's how I stay sane," he said, winking as they drove under a street light, "we've all got to manage when we deal with the Fenton luck."

At that, Jazz smiled, finally beginning to understand her little brother's taste in friends.

**Author's Note:**

> Gashadokuro - mythical skeleton spirits of Japanese mythology that are created from the assembled bones of unburied starvation or violence victims. They tower over the populace -typically averaging fifteen times their size- and grab unsuspecting victims to bite their heads off to drink the blood in hopes of fulfilling a never-ending hunger. Nothing ever says the spirit is limited to being human, though.


End file.
